Darkroom Daze

I've been in the darkroom this week for several days!!  I could live in there and have my husband just slip me food under the door from time to time - maybe some crackers and cheese! ; )  I finally completed that last roll of film from Bodie Ghost Town that I took last year.  There were so many intriguing images on that roll, I just had to find out what they looked like in print.  I have to say there were about three images that looked great, but really weren't focused properly and that was my mistake - I'm getting older and my eyesight at times isn't the greatest!  When you're clicking off your shots in subdued lighting sometimes it's hard (for me) to get it focused perfectly, whereas, with digital you don't have that worry, however, the results are so drastically different.

I had a really big surprise in that my granddaughter, Victoria, came up and we finally made it into the darkroom together!!  My first visitor!  It was so much fun, and she asked such great questions.  She's into digital, but has seen and learned the difference in the resulting images from both.  With digital, in her case, she manipulates and makes the image something totally different - and she's good at it.  She wanted to know the ways to make that same difference with film in the darkroom.  I told her there are ways to manipulate with dodging and burning in that you can make it look surreal, or you can use toners, and/or different types of paper, and there's much more.  For me, this little session that lasted less than a half an hour was over the top!  I loved it - so 'thank you' Victoria!

I was not coming out of the darkroom until I finished off this latest Bodie series.  Again I used the matte fiber based paper on all of these.  I'm posting one of the images that I liked which was from inside the silver mining processing plant.  Now I will start on my European images.

It's also time for me to go pick up my France images (in another week) from the Latitudes Restaurant.  Unfortunately, I heard there were no sales.  However, I plan on using a couple of the larger prints for High Hand Gallery's Large Format show later this summer.  And on the same day, I will be dropping off my two Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge images to the Auburn Arts Commission for Auburn's Second Thursday Art Walk!